


The Centre Cannot Hold

by Volavi



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: (temporary), Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dick Jokes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Panic Attacks, Past Character Death, Post-Forever Evil (Comics), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, heart problems, imagery of a heart attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volavi/pseuds/Volavi
Summary: With the logic-defying time skips of dreams, Dick finds himself imprisoned in the murder machine again, with the bomb attached to his heart. Wires and tubes spill out of his chest like alien tentacles. He’s in a metal sarcophagus, arms splayed back in a parody of the crucifix. Cold metal constrains him, beeps mark out both the pulsing of his heart and the countdown to zero, and he’s wearing nothing except his briefs. Exposed, defenceless, weak, flayed and pinned to a lepidopterist’s spreading board.





	The Centre Cannot Hold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Crafty_Cracker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Crafty_Cracker/gifts).



> Please heed the tags. This fic contains vivid descriptions of heart problems and panic attacks, as well as a near-death experience. There's also swearing from both main characters, bad dreams, kidnapping and Dick-jokes. But there is a happy ending! 
> 
> Beta'd by the amazing @chibinightowl and @leap-of-faith. Thank you both very much indeed.

“Shut up,” the thug grunts and backhands Dick across his cheek. “We’ve already done the ransom vid. Don’t need ya to look pretty any longer.”

Dick works his jaw and wipes the blood away on his shoulder. He can’t reach his face with his hands. He thinks about continuing to taunt the guard, but after consideration, decides to stay quiet for now. He wants to annoy the guy enough to maybe leave him alone for a bit, not to beat him up. 

Dick’s no stranger to being kidnapped. Whether as Bruce Wayne’s ward or as Robin, Dick’s been a target from the moment he arrived in Bruce’s life. Richard Grayson-Wayne had eventually outgrown most of his appeal as a victim, partially because of his dramatic and well-publicized falling out with Bruce, partially because the parade of smaller and presumably more easily abducted younger children has taken some of the spotlight off of Dick as the Wayne heir. Nightwing occasionally ends up captured, usually very short-term, and Nightwing has plenty of ways to escape. 

For the first time in years - since the Crime Syndicate - Dick’s been captured not as Nightwing, but as Richard Grayson-Wayne, Bruce's legal heir and first ward. Richard Grayson-Wayne has a lot fewer options than Nightwing, especially with the press reporting on the event in real time.

The kidnappers have dragged Dick into the maze of tunnels below Gotham, a twisted conglomeration of abandoned subway lines, catacombs, smugglers' caves from Gotham's seafaring past, and sewers that were once marvels of Victorian engineering. Dripping with condensation, the labyrinth is a mixture of natural limestone, modern cement, and eighteenth century bricks. Over the years, different gangs have claimed sections as their own. Secret entrances dot across the city. The warren is so extensive that it’s possible not even Batman has every section mapped. Not that Bruce would ever admit that, and certainly he knows more than any other living person, with Dick and Alfred as close seconds.

One small section, tame and sanitary compared to the rest, operates as a tourist attraction, capitalizing on the shady past of pirates and smugglers and the noir-ish present of supervillains and the Batman. Come see the sites of Gotham’s horrors, the ghost stories and the spooky tales, the hangouts of the murderous criminals of the past and present. 

Guided tours leave every hour on the hour! 

Souvenir maps available for the bargain price of $15! Or two for $25! 

Explore such mysteries as the rumored first hideout of the Penguin! 

The tunnel where (maybe, possibly, allegedly) Bane broke the bat! 

The abandoned subway line that Two-Face's bombed!

Come see the dank little tunnel where some desperate criminals are keeping the oldest son of the Prince of Gotham captive.

The idiots chose a hideout just five hundred yards from a tourist trap. If Dick can make it there, he’ll be free.

Dick is tied to a metal chair, ropes tight around his chest, waist, thighs and feet. His hands are bound behind his back and attached to the chair’s frame. The bullet wound in his leg bleeds sluggishly through the makeshift bandage one of the thugs had provided, probably because they didn't want their valuable hostage to die before they could have him make the all-important ransom video. He's already been dragged through the muck; he stinks, he aches, and he feels sluggish and dull from whatever drugs still lurk in his bloodstream. 

There’s an extra level of vulnerability when abducted as a civilian. Dick’s Nightwing persona is him - he hasn’t divided his psyche like Bruce has - but it’s a version of himself that is a bit colder, a bit better walled, a bit more stubborn.

Dick Grayson doesn’t like being captured as himself at all. 

It reminds him too much of the last time he’d been held unmasked.

It takes Dick twenty two hours and thirteen minutes to escape. He waits for his chance: an opportunity so blatant that even a playboy socialite could take it. Once again blessing the fact that his circus upbringing gives him the chance to explain his knowledge of escapology and contortion, he squirms free, avoids the rest of the goons, and escapes to the tunnels. An outcry of “He’s missing! Find him!” sounds close behind, but Dick knows these passages better than they do. He sprints towards the section of tunnels that are part of the guided tours, leg throbbing, exhausted from no sleep and no food.

Bruce trained him to tap into his reserves, push his body past its breaking points, to set pain and panic aside. Plinks as water drops, his own feet splashing through run off water, echoes of pursuit through the stone walls, fading as he runs at a crouch towards freedom. He breaks out through the gift shop and emerges in the financial district, abandoned outside of business hours, bankers long gone home. 

Dripping with sewer water - smelling like it too - he hobbles to a nearby doorway that provides a touch of concealment. He puts the web of flesh that stretches between his thumb and first finger in his mouth, worries the skin with his teeth until he finds a small pellet buried in the meaty part between the two joints, and bites down hard. The pellet breaks, activating a tiny battery that powers a short-term GPS beacon and SOS alarm. The signal is too weak to have worked underground. Now that he's back at the surface, it can piggyback off of all the cell towers and phones around him. Relieved that his signal is pinging the bat computers, he staggers further away from his exit, keeping to the shadows as best he can. 

Somewhere, his emergency beacon flashes in the Batmobile, Oracle's screens, Tim's wrist gauntlet, and Jason's HUD.

Jason.

Dick finds a place to hide under an overpass, waiting for someone to come, but he really hopes it’s Jason. A small group of homeless men huddle around a fire in a metal trash can, battered sleeping bags and blankets tucked where the sloping concrete of the embankment meets the underside of the highway. Dick's ripped and filthy clothes give an illusion of fitting in, and his facial features are obscured by the muddy, bloody mask of bruises on his face. The smell ensures that the other people gathered around the can don’t stand too close. He holds his hands above the restless fingers of the flames, not sure how much longer he can stand, both literally and figuratively.

God, please let Jason be on his way.

He recognizes the sound of Jason's motorcycle long before he sees it, a stupid grin tugging his lips despite his exhaustion. Dick steps away from the fire and closer to the road, waiting, turning his smile towards that deep growl of a 330 hp inline 4-cylinder supercharged engine. The bike pulls up, Red Hood in all his glory, and Dick walks towards him. He wants to run - to throw himself in Jason's arms - but he's cognizant of what this must look like already, to the men around the fire. Red Hood picking up a homeless man can be explained away as meeting an informant or contact. Red Hood picking up someone who runs into his arms like a cheap Hollywood rom com star and kissing his helmet all over is a more difficult tail to spin.

Even though Dick really prefers the Hollywood movie right now . . . 

Jason cocks his head in the way that means he's using the displays in his helmet to analyze Dick, studying his vitals and heat signature from his position astride his bike.

"Still in one piece?" Jason’s voice modulator disguises any sign of emotion. He sounds harsh and uncaring, but Dick reads concern in the line of his shoulders and controlled grip on the handlebars.

"Minor surface damage only," Dick replies. He throws his leg over the bike - the way the bike is parked means that he has to mount it with his bad leg, which is probably for the best. Dick really doesn't want all his weight on it, even for the second it would take to sit down, but the pull of the wound against the bandage and what is left of his pant leg is enough for him to wince. Crap. No way Jason missed that.

"Take me home," he says into Jason's shoulder.

Jason takes him to the Cave instead, which is almost as good.

****

"This is what happens when you're careless enough to get shot, kidnapped, and dragged through the sewers," Jason says, grumpy sounding but with a half-smile on his face.

Dick crosses his arms. "You act like getting shot was my choice and that I lured the criminals into kidnapping me on purpose."

"Well, not exactly your fault, but these kinds of things keep on happening to you."

Dick knows that Jason is teasing, but the implication that he chose any of this, even while joking, stings a bit. Still, he forces a chuckle. "You sound like Alfred." 

Both of them use humor and sarcasm to defuse tough situations, and Jason had been out of his mind with worry while Dick had been missing. Dick is feeling scraped raw, spread thin like too little butter on bread, so he guesses that Jason feels the same way. 

Jason smiles and kisses Dick’s forehead. Dick knows it’s purely to check on his fever so he pouts. Jason has barely touched him outside of nursing duties since Dick woke up with his calf hot and tight, and a red streak reaching up towards his thigh. 

Jason gives Dick a small smile. "I'm just going to lean into that and say something else that Alfred would say: time to take your pills. I'll even be nice and offer to get them for you."

"Thank you. That is unexpectedly nice of you. Considering that you're my boyfriend and everything." Boyfriend. Maybe if Dick keeps saying it, Jason will start acting like it, instead of like a nurse.

"Shut up. Otherwise I'm going with plan B, which is just letting you hop to the kitchen on one foot." 

Dick chuckles, genuinely this time. At least that was something even the shittiest nurse wouldn’t say. "You shut up - how about plan C, which is I do this?" He leans off the couch, places his hands on the ground, and levers his body up into a handstand. "How do you like them apples?" He turns and hand-walks into the kitchen. He has crutches somewhere. Not particularly interested in using them, however. 

"Can’t take the circus out of the boy, I guess."

"You're just jealous that I don't have to use crutches. I remember how much you whined when you broke your ankle." Holding his leg straight in the air hurts, but as long as he doesn’t try to point his toes it’s not too bad. Most of the muscles keeping it in the air are in his thigh anyway, making it less painful than hopping would have been. At least it’s not as jarring. 

Once he reaches the breakfast bar, Dick rights himself and slides onto a barstool. Several bottles of pills are lined up next to the sink - antibiotics, painkillers, steroids, even vitamins. He gets to work on opening up each bottle - damn those stupid child safety caps - and pouring out the correct number of pills. The antibiotic is the largest pill Dick has ever seen in his life. Turns out infected bullet wounds are kind of a big deal. 

"Do any of those need to be taken with food?" Jason asks, and it's adorable, really, how much of a mother hen he can be when someone he cares about needs, in Jason's opinion anyway, help. Dick is lucky - and knows how lucky he is - that he can count himself on Jason's short list of people that he cares about. He just wishes that Jason was treating him as more than just a patient.

"Yeah," Dick answers, and Jason tosses him an apple from the fridge.

“Thanks.” Dick catches it neatly, takes a few bites and accepts a glass of water from Jason. He picks up all of the pills and eyes the pile, sizing it up. He can take it all in one gulp, of course he can. He knocks the pills back with a chaser of water, but one sticks sideways in his throat. It’s jagged, and scratchy, and it feels the size of man's thumb. Dick sputters and gags, forces himself to take another gulp of water, and the pill goes down.

"You alright?"

Dick nods and takes a few more sips of water. Each swallow tears at his throat, as if the pill is still there, but after clearing it a couple of times, he's able to verbally answer Jason. "Yeah, I'm good. Probably shouldn't have tried to swallow all of them all once, so I choked a bit, but fine now."

"What would you do without me?" Jason says, but there’s more fondness in his voice than he’d ever admit to.

Dick finishes the apple. It’s hard against his still tender throat, but by the time he walks on his hands back to the couch, he’s put the minor incident behind him. 

He has been home - the penthouse apartment he shares with Jason - for only a couple of hours. The bullet wound in his lower leg hadn’t initially been serious, but then it had been submerged in sewage for hours before he managed to escape. By the time one of the criminals had bandaged it without cleaning it first, the contamination was already there. Alfred did his best to thoroughly irrigate the wound when Dick arrived at the cave, but no one had been surprised when it started to show the telltale signs of infection. Alfred had peeled back the bandage and tutted at the angry red skin around the wound, and Dick had admitted it hurt more now than it did the first day. By the time Leslie had arrived to give a second opinion, Dick was running a low-grade fever and felt like he was coming down with the flu. Alfred had insisted Dick stay an extra couple of days for IV antibiotics, and only discharged Dick to Jason’s care when he was satisfied that the wound was responding well. 

Jason has been taking his duties very seriously. 

Jason sits on the couch and delicately picks up Dick's legs to settle them over his lap and back onto the pillow. He puts his hands on Dick's thighs, far from the injury to the bandaged calf, and kneads them gently. "Why don't you nap?"

“Not tired.” Not exactly a lie, but not exactly one hundred percent perfectly true either. Dick’s too wired to try to rest right now. 

Jason chuckles - he knows exactly what Dick means - and wordlessly hands Dick his phone and laptop, and picks up a book for himself.

"Whatcha reading?" Dick asks. "Is it good?"

"The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. I've actually just started it, so I don't know yet, but it's supposed to be great. Want me to start from the beginning and read it out loud to you?"

"I don't want you to have to re-read something you just read."

"Don't worry about it. It's just a few pages."

"Alright then. Thanks," Dick says and snuggles into a more comfortable position against the side of the couch.

The story of brave Lyra sneaking around to spy on adults immediately enthralls Dick. He pays attention for as long as he can, but the pain meds eventually catch up to him - not to mention the fact that he's barely had any sleep the last few nights - and he falls asleep, lulled by the sound of Jason’s voice.

He's not sure how much time has passed when he jolts himself awake, attempting to roll over and stand up before a firebolt of pain in his injured leg arrests the motion. Jason's still there, his lap under Dick's legs, so Dick concentrates on the feeling of Jason's warm hand, solid on his thighs. Dick has slept long enough for the sun to shift away from the windows, and Jason is reading by the light of the lamp arched over the sofa.

"Bad dream?" Jason asks, one eyebrow raised. His hand rubs soothing patterns on Dick's leg.

"I think so. I don't remember it though."

Jason's eyebrow stays up, signalling that he doesn't entirely believe Dick, but it's true. Whatever upsetting thing happened in the dream to shock him to wakefulness has disappeared, passing like a cloud sailing across the summer sun.

"How about I make us some dinner?" Jason offers.

"Perfect. I'm starving." Dick lifts his legs up and Jason slides out from under them, careful not to touch the injured one, and helps Dick lower it back onto the pillows.

"Now do some work while I cook, and don't try to stand up. Or walk on your hands. I'll bring the food to you when it's done."

"Awwww, you really do care. It's sweet. I'm glad you passed me my phone - I'm going to text everyone immediately that the big, bad Red Hood is waiting on me hand and foot."

Jason glares at Dick. "Go ahead. No one would believe it."

"They would. I sent them all that picture of you icing those cupcakes last week, didn't I?"

"That was for Lian. It doesn’t count - I had to make cupcakes."

"Ah, I see. So those perfect swirls of frosting with the red edible glitter don't count, because it was for Lian's school?"

"Yes," Jason maintains with a perfectly straight face.

Dick laughs. "What a shame. I was going to put the pictures I took of them on my Pinterest, but since it doesn't count, I guess no one else will be able to admire them."

Jason frowns. "Well, I guess you can still use them, if you really really want to, as long as it's anonymous."

"Of course it is - it's not like I use my actual name. Now get in the kitchen and cook me up some grub."

"For that, I'm dumping the 'grub' on your head instead of serving it to you."

"Then how can I brag to everyone how tasty it is?"

“You’re such a little shit,” Jason retorts but heads into the kitchen.

Dick doesn't actually mean to, but he falls asleep again messaging his friends while he waits for dinner. It must be the meds or the fever, because he can barely keep his eyes open.

In his dream, he wanders through passageways, dank and dripping. But they're not like the tunnels and sewers under Gotham, where Dick had been held the other day. Instead, they remind him of the halls where he'd been held by the Crime Syndicate, so long ago. In the dream, he’s even wearing his old red uniform. Which had seemed like a good idea at the time - paying homage to one of his Robin colors - but when Dick had returned to Nightwing after his time with Spyral, he'd gladly returned to blue.

After the syndicate revealed his identity to the world, and Dick faked his death and ran around as a spy, a new uniform to mark his return to the Nightwing mantle had felt more than appropriate. It had felt compulsory, as if by shedding his skin he could shed what happened, like a chrysalis. 

But he hadn't actually faked his death, had he? 

With the logic-defying time skips of dreams, Dick finds himself imprisoned in the murder machine again, with the bomb attached to his heart. Wires and tubes spill out of his chest like alien tentacles. Metal encases his torso, his arms splayed out and back in a parody of the crucifix. Cold metal constrains him, beeps mark out both the pulsing of his heart and the countdown to zero, and he’s wearing nothing except his briefs. Exposed, defenceless, weak, flayed and pinned to a lepidopterist’s spreading board. 

He’s a butterfly that’s doubly grounded, by both his frail tattered wings and metal bonds.

Dick stares at Batman's concerned face, ineffective protests falling from his lips. Batman doesn’t listen. Instead, he strokes his hair, pushing it out of Dick's eyes, promising to get him out of there.

Lex Luthor stops him.

Luthor shoves a pill down Dick's throat, clamping a gloved hand over his mouth and nose so he can't breathe, forcing him to swallow the pill dry. Dick gags at the foul taste and the pain of the pill forcing its way down. But that's the least of Dick's worries. Lex keeps his hand over Dick’s face, continuing to cut off his air supply. Dick can hold his breath for a long time, but usually he has some kind of warning, a chance to prepare himself. His lungs burn within the first two minutes. Pain flares along his ribs as he tries to take in precious oxygen. He can't suck in any fresh air or exhale out the carbon dioxide that's poisoning him. The foul gas burns his lungs, and needs to get it out, but can’t. Panic floods his system. 

The heart monitor beeps faster and faster as his heart speeds up in reaction to his fury and fear. Everyone in the room must be able to tell how terrified he is. Batman shouts, ordering Luthor to stop, Bizarro and Catwoman fight, and still Lex keeps Dick's mouth and nose covered, staring at him as if he's looking for some sign.

Dick's heart pounds in his chest - the futile thrashing of a trapped animal - accelerating in an effort to outrace the chemicals in his blood. He wishes he could tell his stupid heart to rest, because all it’s doing is pumping the chemicals in whatever drug Lex forced on him through his body even faster, spreading that vile concoction through his arteries and his veins, until the poison works its way back to his heart.

His heart stutters, jolts, batters itself against his sternum. Dick feels the convulsions in his chest, the rhythm disrupted and uneven, and he wildly thinks it's going to burst out of his body. The wrongness of everything screams at him, incoherent sensations buffeting at him - pain down his breastbone, it's going to crack, pain down his left arm, burning, his heart thrashing, and this whole time instead of the normal steady ba-bum ba-bum, his heart is beating out wild and frantic rhythms, too fast, too chaotic.

And then it stops.

One final squeeze, the pain of suffocation, and then nothing.

Dick takes time to become aware, to realize that it’s over, he’s done, and he takes in his surroundings.

Nothing. There's a sense of being cocooned by blackness, but that's not quite the right word, because black would be something, and everywhere there's a total lack of substance, of anything at all. Dick is floating in the middle of an absence of everything, of color, of sound, even of physicality. He has no body - just a wisp of consciousness, a scrap of the essence that once called itself Richard John Grayson.

So this is death.

Is he going to exist like this forever? Enveloped in nothingness, whatever is left of him - he supposes he could call it his soul - descending into madness, driven there by the sheer lack of stimulation until it disintegrates and becomes one with the void around him.

If Dick still had a body, he'd feel the physical symptoms of panic now. He'd be screaming, but he doesn't have a mouth. His palms would be sweaty, but he doesn't have hands. He'd run, but he doesn't have legs.

Already he feels his spirit fraying, turning into a tatterdemalion soul. 

But before he can spiral down into true despair, he sees a warm, soft light, like a shaft of sunlight angling down from dark clouds. He's never been so relieved to be part of a cliche. The little spark that is all that's left of Dick floats up to the light.

This. . . this probably his brain reacting to oxygen deprivation by hallucinating, or excess levels of carbon dioxide messing his with vision. Excessive dopamine. Brain activity spikes in prefrontal and parietal cortices in the moments before death. 

Except Dick is pretty sure that he’s already dead. 

This is something else, an invocation of grace.

Dick has always clung to the hope that somewhere, his parents wait for him. Maybe not a traditional Heaven, but that there is something waiting, after the brain synapses stop firing. 

It can't all just be worms and dirt. Part of him wished he'd asked Jason, after he came back, but that would be a violation of the worst degree. And he's been afraid of the answer.

He's close to the light, almost within it, when there's a tugging sensation far below him, yanking on his foxfire soul. His body pulls him down, promising pain and agony. Dick resists and strains toward the light, with its promise of the cessation of suffering, but his broken body has the inexorable pull of gravity, and he is drawn down until the little wisp that is Dick is once again encased in its all too human shell.

He's on the floor. He gasps, chest heaving, torso arching off of the ground as his barren lungs fill with air. His heart beats hard enough that he can feel it, but the rhythm, while still too fast, is even and regular.

At first all he can do it breathe, gasping air in and out, but then he becomes aware of every ache, every pain from his beatings in captivity, and his exhaustion. Eventually, he’s coherent enough to open his eyes and look around.

Bruce holds him, watching with a slight downturn of his lips that Dick knows him well enough to read as concern. Lex is close, kneeling by Dick's side, holding a syringe. With no conscious thought, he pulls away from the man.

"I've got you now; you're going to be okay," Bruce murmurs.

Dick isn't sure what happened, but somehow he's out of the machine and the bomb hasn’t gone off. Bruce helps him stand on shaking legs, and wraps him in the billowing black cape of the Bat, promising that he'll keep Dick safe. Blood rushes in Dick's ears. He takes one last look at the murder machine behind him, at Luthor holding the used syringe. That's the last thing that Dick sees before he returns his attention back to Bruce, the feeling of the cape a comforting and familiar feeling around his shoulders. Bruce will take Dick home. Bruce will keep him safe. Dick remembers Bruce's desperate fear - for Dick! - his reassuring hand on Dick's face, his promises to save Dick. Dick can trust Bruce and follow his lead. Dick’s still tired, hurt, and confused, but as long as Dick listens to Bruce, it’ll be okay. 

His mind can't quite let go of the image of the gleaming needle, Lex perching too close, Lex's hand on Dick's mouth and nose, Lex shoving the pill down Dick's throat.

Dick jerks to full consciousness, truly awake now, with a yell trapped behind gritted teeth. Heart hammering, he looks around the familiar surroundings of their apartment, taking in the fact that he is on his comfortable couch. He's sure it was still daylight when he fell asleep, but now the room is dark, the curtains open to views of the night sky and city lights. The only light inside spills from the kitchen.

Shaking his head, Dick tries to get rid of his disorientation. He doesn't know how he got here, half of his conscious mind still trapped in the dream. But he remembers that the murder machine and the Syndicate had been ages ago. He’s certain of two things: he is in the home he shares with Jason and his bladder is really full. He swings his legs down and tries to stand, but pain shoots up from his calf, bringing him fully back to the present.

"Jason?"

Before Dick can try to walk, Jason is there, appearing at his side like a will-o’-the-wisp. "Babe, you shouldn't be on your feet."

Dick blinks at Jason. "I fell asleep."

"I know - I'm sorry I didn't wake you, but you looked like you needed the rest. I made soup so it was fine simmering on the stove until you woke up. Now, sit back down."

"I need to pee." Dick can’t quite clear his head, but at least one biological need could be satisfied easily.

"Okay, I'll help you to the bathroom."

Dick feels weak as a newborn foal, shaky, and part of that is the fever, his body marshalling all of its resources to fight the infection and help the antibiotics do their job. He allows Jason to take most of his weight as they make their way to the toilet. Jason gives him the illusion of privacy as he relieves himself. After Dick washes up, Jason takes his temperature. The way he frowns at the digital readout and decides that he needs to swipe the thermometer again across Dick's forehead is adorable.

"So what's up, Doc?" Dick asks cheekily, just to see Jason transfer that cute little frown to him. He grins. Jason is so fun to tease.

"100.5. Better. Now do you want to go back to the couch or to bed? I'll bring your food on a tray to you either way."

"I'm not an invalid. Why can't I sit at the table?"

"Fucking hell, Dick, you're still very sick. You could get sepsis. You could lose your leg. You're going to go lie down so I can elevate your leg and you can rest."

Dick isn’t an idiot. He knows all of this. He also doesn’t think sitting at the table to eat dinner is going to make a difference either way, especially since he could easily put his leg up on an extra chair. He’s spent the last three days lying down, he’s cranky, and if he thinks he can manage to eat at a real table, he should be allowed to do so.

One look at Jason’s implacable expression shuts down that argument before Dick can even voice it. Dick isn’t going to win this one. 

"Fine. Couch, then, I guess," Dick says with ill grace.

Dick thinks about bending down to walk on his hands again to make some kind of point to Jason, but even he doesn't know exactly what that point would be. And Jason's broad shoulders, so solid beneath Dick's arm, and Jason’s arm around his waist are reassuring in a way he needs right now. 

He allows himself to be half-carried back to the couch and almost whines when Jason breaks contact after lowering him down to position the pillows under Dick's leg, fussing with the placement. Jason straightens and gives the pillows - the stupid pillows! - a little pat. It’s probably just an automatic action, like smoothing a blanket, but Dick is jealous of the pillows. Jason has barely touched him for the last few days. Helped him walk, sure, steadied him, took his temperature, but beyond those basic points of caretaking, there have been few contacts just to express love and affection. Jason seems almost mad at him, though Dick can't for the life of him figure out why.

Jason unwraps the bandages around Dick’s leg then peels back the gauze over the wound, just enough to inspect the black line Alfred had drawn around the red areas of the infection. If the infection began to grow again, past the Sharpie boundary marker, Dick would need to go back to the cave immediately. Even from Dick’s slightly farther point of view, the redness might be a little smaller than the line, but Jason takes his sweet time, inspecting the wound as if he’s deciphering ancient calligraphy. His expression is clinical, distant, and he doesn’t even smile when he finally declares that everything is okay.

After redoing the bandages, Jason heads back to the kitchen and returns shortly with a tray of soup, a glass of water, a peeled orange, even a napkin. Dick smiles his gratitude and thanks Jason, trying to get a reaction from him besides the calm, calculating look of assessment. 

Dick eats his soup without protest - and it's delicious. Jason obviously made the stock from scratch, just like Alfred taught him. Jason has a bowl too, and while they eat, some of the tension between them dissipates. When they’re done, Dick hopes that when Jason comes back from the kitchen they can both enjoy some snuggling in front of the TV.

Jason returns, but instead of sitting, he stands in front of Dick with a frown, and holds his palm out to reveal Dick's meds. "Time for your pills again."

Foreboding crawls through Dick’s body at the sight of the pills, though he's really not sure why. He just knows he really really doesn't want to take the damn things. But Jason’s eyes are on him, alert and observant like a bird of prey, and Dick knows he can't get out of this. Especially since he won't be able to begin to explain about how just looking at the pills makes his throat clench and his chest ache.

Dick grabs the smallest pill; he doesn't even know what it is, just that he wants to start with the easiest one and work his way up to the giant horse pill that is the antibiotic. He knows that attempting all of them in one go the way he did earlier would be foolhardy, and not the good kind of foolhardy, of taking a risk for the thrill of it or for the safety of others. It would be more like the destined to fail kind of foolishness.

He gingerly puts the pill on his tongue, takes a swig of water, tries to swallow, but his throat spasms and clenches. The pill doesn't go down and he just coughs and coughs until he spits it out into his palm.

Jason stares with wide eyes, stunned by Dick’s actions."What's wrong?"

Dick can't answer because he's still too busy coughing, trying to breathe past the lump in his trachea, the lump that he knows isn't actually there. He knows that he's not really choking, but he can't swallow, he can't inhale, his heart is flailing inside his chest like the final paroxysms of a dying animal. The panic rises, a trickle becoming a river becoming a flood. His hands shake and he needs to breathe. He needs to calm down.

Jason kneels in front of him and takes the glass out of his trembling hand. Slowly, Dick realizes that Jason is talking, murmuring soothing words, one hand on his shoulder, kneading gently at the stiffened muscle.

He tries to pay attention to what Jason is saying, and gradually the words start to make sense; they're instructions on how to breathe. Dick can't quite parse their meaning though, so instead he stares and mirrors Jason's own breathing patterns.

Slowly, breath by painful breath, the panic resides. Jason nods in approval, continuing to breathe in measured intervals. 

“Are you with me?” Jason says.

“Kind of.”

“Okay, what are the lyrics to your favorite song?” At Dick’s wide-eyed stare, Jason adds, “It’ll help ground you. So tell me.”

Dick thinks for a minute, unable to pick a single one. When a certain song by Queen comes to mind, he knows it’s the right choice. Maybe it’s not his most favorite, but it fits. 

“My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies,” he whispers, awkward and slow at first but growing in confidence as he continues. “Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die. I can fly, my friends. The show must go on, the show must go on. I'll face it with a grin, I'm never giving in. On, with the show.” 

"Better?" Jason asks.

"Yes, thanks." And Dick, despite already feeling vulnerable and cracked like an egg showing all of its tender and unformed bits, opens himself up just a bit further to expose even more weakness. Jason deserves it after what he just did for him. "I am glad that you were here. I’m not sure what I would have done without you."

"Don't mention it," Jason says, his voice light in an attempt at casualness. But his clear eyes still bore into Dick's, searching for clues like the detective he was trained to be. "Now do you want to tell me what that was about?"

Dick shakes his head and forces himself to not look away. Looking away would be another sign of weakness to be analyzed and studied. "I don't really know. I guess the pill tried to go down the wrong way."

"Huh. Like the ones you took earlier today?"

"Something like that. I guess."

"Do you think you're ready to try again?"

"No! Not yet," Dick protests, his voice too frantic to be easily dismissed.

Jason heaves a big sigh, lets it out slowly, like he's once again counting his breathing, searching for equanimity. "Dick," he says in the measured tone of someone barely keeping a lid on their impatience, "you need to take them. You have a bad infection, and if we're not careful, it’ll spread and you will get septicemia."

Dick understands the logic of this; he knows that Jason is right. Yet every bit of his lizard brain is screaming in protest, and only his years of training at keeping a tight facade is keeping his appearance more or less outwardly calm. "Okay, okay. Give me a moment - I need to think."

"I can do that. Tell me what you need."

"I don't know what I need right now."

"It's okay, you don't need to know right now. Let's try to figure something out, though, because you do need to take those pills."

Jason moves to sit next to Dick on the couch, and wraps an arm around Dick's shoulders, pulling him in close. Dick finds comfort in the touch, especially since he’d be missing this kind of calming contact earlier. "Would talking about it help?" Jason asks after a moment of silence, voice soft.

"Maybe it was just a fluke? Bad luck, each time today."

"I know you don't believe that. If you did, you'd be willing to try again, even with just one pill. But I don't think that you’re ready to do that, are you?"

After a momentary inner battle, Dick is forced to shake his head no. He's not ready or willing to try to take another pill right now, even the smallest one. He wants to, if only to prove to Jason and himself that everything was just a result of bad luck, but just the idea of trying again so soon makes his chest tighten.

"I didn't think so," Jason says, and he is still trying to sound calm and easy to talk to, but Dick hears a hint of frustration under the layers of ease. Like someone had put sandpaper inside a chocolate cake. "I wish you felt like you could tell me what’s going on. I've seen you take meds before, dozens of times, and it's never been an issue. Do you have a sore throat? Maybe some swelling that's bothering you?"

"No, that's not it."

Jason looks doubtful, and Dick knows that he's close to taking him back to the Manor so that Alfred can give him a full examination.

"Really, Jason. I'm not sick. I don't have any pain or anything like that. I'm just . . . having a hard time right now."

Jason does another one of those measured sighs to release his frustration. "Fine. Whatever. I don't know how I’m supposed to help though if you're not going to talk to me."

"I can't tell you what I don't understand myself. This has never happened to me before."

"Then what triggered it to start now?"

Dick thinks back to the dream, the one he had during his most recent nap that he remembers so clearly."I don’t know," he lies.

The thing is - the root of the problem - is that Jason doesn't really know what happened to Dick after he was unmasked in front of the world. Everyone thought he died. Bruce had a funeral, and the heroic community had mourned. But Dick wasn't dead - he was acting as Agent 37 with Spyral, a farce which lasted far longer than either of them had expected, for reasons that nothing to do with the mission. Dick had been forced to stay because Bruce was compromised and had no extraction plan in place, an oversight no one could have anticipated. 

When Dick had returned to Gotham with a message to deliver to the rest of the family, Jason had punched him, hard enough to knock him down. But Dick had never forgotten what Jason said to him. "You don't do that to your . . . you don't do that to another Robin!"

That hesitation was Dick's first clue that Jason didn't see him as a brother any more than Dick saw Jason as one. Well, the first clue that he had consciously acknowledged - with the benefit of hindsight, there had been many more.

Slowly, after Dick returned for good, he'd been able to get closer to Jason and managed to repair some of the damaged trust. They eventually acknowledged their mutual attraction and started dating. 

But Jason still thought that he had faked his death, and Dick, too ashamed of what he'd done, especially in the face of Jason's very real and still haunting actual death, crawling out of his own grave, resurrected against his will, his vulnerability preyed upon, Dick had never been able to admit the truth. What good could it possibly have done? But now, the falsehood is pushing them apart. 

Jason pulls away from Dick. “Don’t lie to me.” 

Dick thinks about the distance he’s been feeling from Jason all day, the clinical looks, the coldness. While he’s been attentive to every one of Dick’s bodily needs, he’s been emotionally aloof. Now Jason is putting even more space between them, physically for now. With a painful twisting in his gut, Dick realizes that the physical gap will soon morph into even more emotional separation. 

Dick takes a deep breath, reaches out to Jason and meets his eyes. Jason returns the look with a wary, noncommittal expression. 

Dick can’t lose this relationship - can’t fuck it up the way he’s fucked up every other relationship. He’s needy and he’s an emotional mess and sometimes he just can’t stop performing. 

Maybe he finally needs to drop the act. 

Dick knows he needs to salvage this situation, and there is nothing he can do except tell Jason at least some of what happened to him. Jason is suspicious already, and is clearly hurt that Dick isn’t telling him anything. The only way to heal this rift between them is to reveal something that Dick never wanted Jason to know, and frankly, that sucks. 

Time to suck it up, Grayson. 

“I promise I won’t lie to you. I’ll tell you the truth, I’ll tell you everything, but you’ll have to be patient with me. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Jason gives Dick another one of the cool assessments he’s been giving Dick all day, but nods. 

Dick returns a small smile of gratitude. "I coughed when I swallowed the first set of pills, because I probably tried to swallow too many at once. One of them seemed to go down sideways and it was huge, like they made it for a hippo. But that seemed to remind me of a bad memory that I thought I'd moved on from a long time ago."

Jason draws closer to Dick. "Go on."

 

"I was also probably a bit unsettled after that first bad dream I had - and before you ask, no, I still don't remember it and I am telling the truth."

Jason holds his hands up in a ‘don't shoot’ gesture. "Hey, sorry I doubted you before. But I still don't see the problem - you've never had issues like this before, so what was the thing that you remembered?"

Dick sighs. "Do you remember, before we got together, when I was kidnapped and unmasked on TV by the Crime Syndicate?"

"Yes." Jason cocks his head. “Did something happen the other day that reminded you of then?”

Dick exhales in relief. Jason is smart, which might make this easier. “Something about being bound for so long, as a civilian - it was the first time that’s happened since Spyral - it’s messed me up. It reminded me of being held by the Syndicate. Especially the last day.”

Jason's expression darkens. "When you faked your death."

"Well, not exactly.” Dick hedges, not happy with what he knows he needs to reveal, but pushing forward anyway.

"What do you mean? I think I need to hear the whole story. All of it."

The whole story? Well, shit. Dick isn’t sure he wants to go there - in fact, he knows he very much does not want to go there - but nothing else will explain the problem with the meds. "Lex Luthor forced me to take a pill that stopped my heart."

"I remember hearing about that part."

"Well, that wasn't fake. It really happened, and my heart really stopped."

Jason blinks hard, like he's trying to clear his vision. He stares at Dick with a blank expression, before saying quietly, "Your heart. It literally . . . stopped?"

Dick nods.

"How long? And I'm going to kill Luthor."

"Wait!” Dick grabs hold of Jason’s arm, keeping him in place so that he doesn’t go and do something monumentally stupid. “It was the only way to get me out of the murder machine and to stop the bomb."

Jason shakes him off and stands, pacing back and forth in front of the couch. "What was Bruce thinking? He just let Luthor do that to you?"

Dick shrugs. "Bruce and Selina were trying to stop them, but Bizarro was protecting Luthor. I was upright, strapped against the machine, and he had his hand over my mouth and nose until I lost consciousness. The next thing I remember, I was down on the ground, everything hurt, and Luthor had a syringe in his hand."

"What was that for?"

Jason wasn’t going to like this part. Dick bites his lip, letting the pain ground him, before forcing himself to answer as calmly as possible. "Adrenaline. To make my heart beat again."

"So how long was your heart NOT beating, then?"

Dick shrugs again. Of course Jason is going to focus on the details that Dick just doesn’t have. He wasn’t even conscious for this part, and there wasn’t enough money in the world to convince him to ask Bruce about the specifics. Dick had never wanted to know, had never wanted to talk about it with anyone, especially Jason. Only the fear of driving a wedge between them was spurring him to do so now. "I don't know. I have no idea. At least a minute, I guess. Probably more.”

"Probably more?" Jason's voice is low, dangerous, full of threat. "How long exactly?"

He wishes he could stand up and join his boyfriend and wrap his arms around him to reassure him that he’s here, right now, alive. And also to maybe stop Jason from leaving this apartment to shoot Luthor.

"Long enough to fool the machine into thinking that I was really dead. Long enough to get me out of it once the bomb was deactivated. I'm not really sure."

"So probably more than just one minute."

Dick purses his lips, unhappy at this line of questioning, but he'd promised that he would be honest with Jason. "Yes," he finally admits. "I never asked Bruce, but probably."

"Did anyone do CPR on you?"

"I don't think so. I mean, obviously I don't remember, but when I woke up all of my ribs were still intact, no more bruising than I had already." Jason seems to be focusing on the nitty-gritty, maybe to keep everything ordered logically in his own mind, to make sure that he knows everything possible. Dick doesn’t like that Jason is moving towards a certain conclusion like a lawyer doing a cross-examination, but he knows that now he started the conversation, he can’t stop without making everything worse.

"You're telling me that . . . so let me get this straight. You were - you actually died."

And there it is. The exact conclusion Dick didn’t want Jason to jump to. Dick shakes his head vehemently. "No, not really. I wouldn't call it that."

"I think most actual doctors would disagree with you. Your heart wasn't beating, you weren't breathing, you weren't on life support. You were dead."

Now Dick is angry. "No, Jason. You were dead. Damian was dead. I'm just the idiot who got captured and unmasked on live television, and strapped to a bomb."

"None of that is your fault."

"Ha, really? That's rich from you, considering you were just telling me earlier that it was my fault that I got shot."

"Dick, I was joking."

"Well, it wasn't very funny then and you can't have it both ways."

"You were joking back!"

"What else was I supposed to do? Nothing that happens to me is anything comparable to what you went through. I can't . . . there's nothing I can say."

Jason stops his furious pacing and finally looks at Dick. Their eyes meet and he still looks angry. How much of that anger is directed at Dick isn't clear though."Christ on a cracker, babe. It's not a competition. It's not a dick measuring contest about trauma."

Despite the seriousness of the moment and the raw emotion in the air, Dick snorts a small laugh. "Well, if it was a Dick measuring contest, I'd win, because I measure seventy inches."

Jason’s brows furrow, pulling at the tiny scar above one eye. He stares at Dick with a mix of incredulity and a little bit of humor. "Oh my god. Is now really the right time for a dick joke? I can't believe you just said that." 

Dick's laugh is a little more real this time. "You started it."

Jason huffs. "Yeah, I guess I did." He sits back down on the couch. "But you're trying to change the subject and distract me with humor."

"Maybe a little," Dick agrees with a crooked smile. “Not the first time either one of us has done that just today. Using humor to try to deal with trauma - we both do that.”

“You’re not wrong, but let me be serious for a sec. My point is that trauma doesn't work like a competition - that one person gets to have the market cornered just because they went through something that seems worse or harder or bigger. You died, and how long you were dead for doesn't matter. You're allowed to be upset by it."

Dick shrugs one shoulder and looks away. "I guess."

"No, I mean it, babe. I don't want you thinking that you can't tell me things just because you think it's not bad enough compared to me."

"I still can't explain why swallowing the pills upset me now. It's been years, and I've taken so many since then without a problem." Jason’s understanding and kindness when Dick was fearing anger and disappointment have left Dick feeling wrongfooted, and he wants to keep pushing just to make sure Jason really means what he’s saying. 

"But you just got kidnapped and held for nearly a day. As a civilian, which you already pointed out feels different. More vulnerable. Plus, you're sick, injured, and sleep deprived. Things can hit us harder when we already feel like shit. Add in the fact that you choked a bit the first time and are having bad dreams already, it makes sense to me that you panicked."

"Heh. Not exactly how I would describe it, but okay. If it makes sense to you, I'm glad, because it sure as hell still doesn't make sense to me." Who knows what goes on his own psyche, some days. 

"Don't worry. I got you. Now we just need to figure out how to get you your meds without a panic attack. Do you think that you could try again? One pill at a time, if I sit here right next to you?"

Dick thinks about it, he really does. He just wants this to be over and if he forces himself to swallow, he might be able to power through it. But just contemplating it makes his throat start to spasm, his diaphragm clench, and his mouth dry and thick.

Relunctually, refusing to meet Jason's eyes again, Dick admits, "I don't think I can."

"Hey. Hey, you can look at me." Jason sounds so unbelievably gentle. "This is nothing to be ashamed about. It's just a thing that we need to work out, a puzzle to solve. We do that all the time. Do you want me to call Alfred and see if there are liquid versions of any of the meds? Worst case scenario, you can go back on an IV to get antibiotics."

"No, I don't want that. I don't want you to call Alfred."

"Well, blood poisoning isn't an option, either." A hint of steel shows through the gentle tone of Jason's voice.

"Let me think." Dick takes Jason's hand and squeezes. "Simmer down. I don’t want to get blood poisoning either."

"Glad to hear it."

Dick’s thoughts are coming too quickly to marshall into order, tripping over each other and fighting to be individually acknowledged. He’s still unsettled, but there’s a memory somewhere. Buried, long ago, but a memory of caring and warmth.

"When I was little, I remember my mom crushing up a pill for me and giving it to me in applesauce or yogurt. If we try something like that, I know I’d be able to handle spoonfuls of applesauce. Or ice cream." Such a simple solution that Dick is annoyed he didn’t think of it earlier, but it’s been a long time either of them had really been mothered. Alfred did his best, but Alfred had the mindset of a British army medic. One took one’s meds as prescribed. Stiff upper lip. 

Jason considers for a minute. "Ice cream, huh? I know some pills aren't supposed to be crushed, like extended release versions, so I'm still calling Alfred or Leslie to check. But as long as they give the okay, we can do that."

"I just don't want to have to go over all of this with Bruce."

"I don't blame you there. I think I can get either of them to agree to keep this between us, assuming we don’t have to go full IV."

“Thanks.”

“We’ll get you through this. I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.”

“Me too.” Dick pulls Jason into a kiss. Finally, he has the physical and emotional connection he’s needed all day. Jason leans into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Dick, and Dick feels more of the tension drain from his tight muscles. 

“So are you feeling well enough to hand-walk into the kitchen while I call Al?”

Dick laughs. “You didn’t have to ask.”

“There is something that I want to know, though.”

“What’s that, babe?” 

“I’ve always wondered how you get Dick from Richard.”

This is why Jason is his favorite. Dick shoots Jason a crooked, cocky grin. “You ask nicely.”

**Author's Note:**

> To my recipient: Thanks for the lovely prompts - I had a lot of fun writing this fic and it was an idea I never would have thought of myself. I hope you enjoy it!


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